ALT(R)
ALT(R) is a site-responsive exchange ritual that highlights scent’s capacity as a vessel for memory and agency. Conceived in dialogue with the Soldiers and Sailors Monument—a towering emblem of triumph and permanence—ALT(R) counters stone with breath, continuity with evanescence.
Drawing from precolonial Visayan cosmology, the perfume is composed of botanicals historically present throughout South and Southeast Asia: ylang ylang, citrus, sampaguita, elemi resin, vetiver, patchouli, and sandalwood. These notes form a complex, woody, and floral profile—an embodied invocation of the land. Each bottle becomes a portable offering, carried on the body and released into the air, making the wearer a living site of remembrance.
The work is activated through an intimate exchange. Visitors are invited to receive the perfume in return for a single admission: “What’s one thing you wish you’d said or had the chance to say?” These unspoken truths written on seed paper—will become an anonymous, living archive of longing.
ALT(R) invites participants to move through public space as carriers of an invisible monument—one that resists erasure not by carving ourselves in stone, but through the persistence of breath, touch, and shared intimacy—a means of healing, and a call to remember what history leaves unsaid.
The fragrance is a rich, woody floral perfume oil. A spark of spiced citrus in the dark illuminates a mind-ALT(R)ing floral accord, grounded by resinous woods that breathe with the onset of the morning dew. Evocative and intimate, its unfolding is soft yet complex and animalic, lingering on the skin like an offering at the foot of a sacred tree.
Fragrance Notes
Top: Sweet Orange, Ginger, Black Pepper, Lemongrass, Elemi
Heart: Ylang-Ylang, Sampaguita, Frangipani, Champaca
Base: Sandalwood, Vetiver, Patchouli, Cedarwood, Amyris, Benzoin, Labdanum, Frankincense, Musk, Elemi